BEDFORD - About 50 county residents spent more than two hours venting about their drinking water and their property values Wednesday night at a meeting with Department of Environmental Quality officials.

DEQ held the meeting to answer questions about Bedford’s old leaking landfill and the corrective action plan the city has to prepare by July 20.

The meeting ended on an unnerving note when residents asked DEQ official Howard Freeland if he would drink water contaminated with volatile organic compounds like those found in their wells. Those compounds include chemicals used in common household cleaners and paint strippers.

“I wouldn’t drink it,” he said.

When asked if he would shower or bathe in it, he also said no. Inhalation exposure of the water vapor is more toxic than ingesting volatile organics, he said.

Geoff Christe, the environmental engineer working directly with the city on its corrective action plan, said that charcoal filters do take volatiles out of groundwater, and that residents should check the amount and types of volatiles they have to determine if they need to worry about inhalation exposure.

Wayne Andrews, one of six residents with contaminated wells that the city has provided carbon filters for, said his filters are becoming increasingly greasy.

“It’s slimy,” he said. “It’s some real nasty looking stuff this time.”

Residents uniformly expressed outrage that the city only plans to extend public water service to six residents on Bell Town Road. Some residents on Draper Road are just a stone’s throw from the contaminated wells.

“How will those people know whether their water is safe to drink?” one woman asked.

“We can’t have peace of mind until we have city water,” said Ellen Overstreet, who has become unofficial spokeswoman for the community.

Christe said the DEQ could not require the city to extend waterlines beyond known areas of contamination, but that it will require the city to monitor wells to be sure the contamination doesn’t continue to migrate.

City officials met with the DEQ in Richmond on Friday after being summoned to discuss their draft corrective action plan, which DEQ said was inadequate.

No city officials, except the city attorney, attended Wednesday’s meeting. Steve Dietrich, director of DEQ’s Roanoke regional office, told the crowd that the meeting was not a formal public hearing but a chance for residents to freely express their concerns.

Several residents said that their land has depreciated in value and has a stigma attached to it, even if their wells don’t yet show contamination.

Phillip Johnson said his well does show some contamination but the city didn’t offer him a filter, nor is he on the list of six who will get city water.

Christe said the city has a three-pronged approach to addressing groundwater contamination. The first is the extension of the waterline. The second is an attempt to stop continued leaching from the 92-acre landfill, which was built in the 1960s.

Source control could take one of two forms, Christe said. The city could build an interception trench along Mike Schrock’s property on the southern boundary or drill a series of recovery wells. The water would be put through an “air stripper,” to remove contaminants.

Along Bell Town Road, the city hypothesizes that once the six contaminated wells are no longer in service, the contaminated groundwater will not be drawn in that direction. If that theory doesn’t hold, DEQ would require further corrective action, Christe said.

The city may also inject some chemicals into the groundwater to try to speed cleanup, he said.

Dietrich urged county residents to take their concerns to both city and county officials, noting that DEQ could only enforce the corrective action plan, which is likely to take 10 years to complete.